Pro-life curriculum?

CHELSEA WEIKART Catholic News Service

1/01/70

WASHINGTON - The pro-life issue "is one of most important
issues our culture faces" and "we thought the time had come
for someone to take it as serious as math or science or
English," said one of the developers of a new curriculum with
that aim.

Camille Pauley is co-founder and president of Healing the
Culture, a Seattle-area organization that has developed an
ethics and philosophy pro-life curriculum called "Principles
and Choices."

Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle gave the imprimatur
("let it be printed") for the curriculum, which will be sent
to 15 schools across the country in November.

"We have not filled the need for a sophisticated and
intelligent philosophical dialogue of why we are pro-life,"
Pauley told Catholic News Service in an interview in
Washington.

Pauley and Jesuit Father Robert J. Spitzer, former president
of Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., worked for five
years to produce what is now a four-part curriculum for
private schools focusing on philosophy, theology and ethics
as a foundation for pro-life views.

Developed from Father Spitzer's book "Ten Universal
Principles," the curriculum covers 15 major themes, including
happiness, success, human suffering, beginning-of-life issues
and human rights.

"They can use these principles way beyond the pro-life
issues," said Pauley. "These apply to any social justice
issues such as poverty, euthanasia, immigration or capital
punishment."

"When students understand what pro-life really means, and
that it is the only scientifically founded and rationally
based position and that pro-choice is actually very
irrational and very unscientific, they aren't ashamed to be
pro-life anymore," said Pauley.

Along with workbooks for the students, there is a teacher
handbook, with references to Scripture and the Catechism of
the Catholic Church, DVDs, PowerPoint presentations,
minute-by-minute lectures, online worksheets,
question-and-answer forums, and a play script with audio.

Created as a supplement to existing classes, it can be taught
in the recommended four-week period every year for four
years, or condensed into one week, or all four books can be
combined to be taught in one semester.

Pauley said she designed the curriculum to be extremely
flexible for teachers' and parents' wants and needs. Each of
the four parts of the curriculum can be purchased
individually, or parts can mixed and matched to fit differing
educational needs.

The curriculum was tested in two schools: Eastside Catholic
High School in Sammamish, Wash., and McGill-Toolen Catholic
High School in Mobile, Ala.

Lyn Kittridge, religious studies teacher at Eastside, has
taught the curriculum and said it has been used in several
classes including religion and Advanced Placement bioethics.

"This curriculum is providing teachers with a way to teach
about these important issues using universal principles that
brings the discussion above the emotional level," she told
CNS in an interview conducted via email.

Kittridge also said the curriculum adheres to a curriculum
framework for developing catechetical materials for high
school students that the U.S. Catholic bishops approved in
2007.

"This curriculum gives (students) a way to understand these
issues in terms of universal principles and not just
emotional, political propaganda, and explain these issues at
a level above the emotional, political, fear-mongering that
dominates the media's discussion," she said.

According to Bob Laird, director of programs for the Cardinal
Newman Society, the curriculum "takes all of the pro-life
issues and puts them in the proper context that will help
improve the Catholic identity of any school."

Based in Manassas, Va., the society has as its mission "to
help renew and strengthen Catholic identity" in Catholic
education.

Former family life director for the Diocese of Arlington,
Va., Laird said in his visits to 175 Catholic schools, he
hadn't found a good curriculum dealing with pro-life issues.

"It's important for us to weave the Catholic identity into
the entire fabric of the schools," he added.

Pauley said plans call for a version of the curriculum to be
released for middle-schoolers early next year.